Gregory A. Curt, In Memoriam

Greg was a virtuoso lecturer who delivered superb solo performances over which he labored with an obsession. He created just the right slides that would help “tell the story,” and oh, how Greg loved to tell a story. ButwhatGreg lovedbestwastheroleof impresario.Hewas a wizard at bringing the right people with diversified talents and tastes together and setting before them a common and ambitious goal. Indeed,atthefoundingofthisjournal,TheOncologist, itwasGreg whom we first approached, asking him how we shouldbest begin. Greg immediatelyorchestrated an earlySaturdaymorningmeetinginasmallconference room in Building 10 at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). “If we can first recruit Bruce [Chabner] as a FoundingEditor,therestwill fall intoplacequickly,”he predicted. He was right. Bruce arrived wearing a Yale baseball cap, looked at Greg, and asked,“What’s up?” towhichGreganswered,“Let’sstarta journal for the doc in the trenches.”Within minutes, Greg was chalkingnamesonadustyblackboardasquicklyasthe fourofuscouldnominatethem...andthejournalwas born. More than 21 years later, Bruce remains our Editor-in-Chief, and Greg is our Emeritus Editor in eternum.That NCI conference roomnow is dedicated to him. Greg was also the founding Continuing Medical Education (CME) director of The Oncologist, and again in his role as impresario, he magically succeeded in getting the NIH Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences to accredit the journal’s CME program from 2002 until 2007, when the NCI ceased its accreditation. Greg,who also used these CME courses as teaching tools for NCI Fellows, was very proud of The Oncologist’s long history of CME, which has awardedmore than 70,000 American Medical Association Physician Recognition Award Category 1 credits since 2002. He was also proud that Frank Balis and Jayne Gurtler have so ably fostered and developed this program, which provides continuing education for the physician entrusted with cancer patient care. The poet Sophocles wrote,“Onemust wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.”We only wish Greg’s life had been lengthened becausewewerewitnessing how splendid his day had been. His lifelong dedication to cancer patients, coupledwiththeperfectionofhis impresario’sskills,wasfostering advancesacrossanarrayofcancer researchandcancereducation promoting venues. Blessed by visionary leaders at AstraZeneca, where he served as the Executive Director of External Scientific and Clinical Relations since 2008, he used his unusual latitude to bring talents to issues that were historically daunting and sometimes nearly taboo among clinical investigators. His work as cochair of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), a role he shared with Mace Rothenberg, exemplifies his innovator’s approach to problems in oncology. First, he instigated theStandard TermsofAgreement for Research Trial (START) clauses in collaboration with the NCI. He predicted that if we had access to standardized legal language for key elements of clinical trial agreements, we would increase the efficiency of contract negotiations, resulting in reduced costs and accelerated entry of new cancer therapies into clinical trials. He was right. The START clauses now are a free toolkit of standardized legal language for key elements common to most clinical trial agreements. By starting the negotiation process with commonly agreed-upon language, the START clauses simplify and accelerate the contracting process. Although developed with cancer clinical trials in mind, the START clauses have since been used for all types of clinical research. But the START clauses were only the start of his coleadership of the LSC. Indeed, as soon as the START clauses had been published, Greg was conspiring with Mace, and soon with Chris Viehbacher, then chairmanof theCEORoundtableonCancer,tobeginaclinical trial data-transparency, data-sharing initiative that would help transformnot only the pharmaceutical industry but academia and the NCI as well. This was to become a sea-change in the entrenched tradition of rarely sharing patient-level data. Greg andMace, alongwith a host of visionarieswhom they recruited to the Life Sciences Consortium’s Project Data Sphere® (PDS) initiative, embarked on building one of the world’s great troves of cancer clinical trial, patient-level databases. Their efforts and vision have created a freely available digital library–laboratory in which are embedded the SAS analytical tools needed to answer the research questions posed by the more than 1,300 investigators who have already been welcomed within PDS. More are joining daily. Whata legacyGreghas left, andhowblessedwehavebeen to witness “how splendid the day has been” because of him. The day was, however, sadly too short.